Ten years ago, when he started driving, there were only a hundred taxis in the whole Denpasar area, all under one company. Now there are five big companies and well over seventeen hundred cars between them — competition he didn't used to have to think about. Tourism brought the bars, the shops, even a McDonald's and a Hard Rock Cafe. It also brought a lot more work for Balinese people in the south — hotels, restaurants, shops, construction, even garbage collection.
There's a rule meant to protect that: entrepreneurs and government projects have to hire Balinese people first. But the newer, flashier businesses — surf shops, brand clothing stores, the stylish restaurants — are rarely Balinese-owned. Those come from Java, Japan, Europe, wherever the investment money originates. Balinese people tend to run smaller, family-owned shops and hotels instead, or work the beach selling to tourists, or drive, like he does.
He isn't even originally from South Bali himself — he came from the west of the island, like most people working in Kuta now, chasing the same tourism money everyone else is. There's a low season and a high season, but never really an off-season, so there's always a little to be made. He works two straight weeks in Kuta, then goes home for two days to see his wife and children, occasionally stopping to see his son in Denpasar along the way.
The prices have gone up in the tourist areas, and our salaries have not, not that much anyway.
So the family still buys food at the small village markets, at prices tourists never see. A home telephone remains out of reach — only about one in five households in the villages has one, and those who do let their neighbours use it. If he wants to call his wife, he calls the neighbour, who passes the message along. A television, though, he managed on credit, still paying it off month by month. Keeping his kids at home in the evenings, rather than at the neighbour's house watching someone else's TV, mattered enough to make that a priority.
Running water and electricity now reach every home, a real improvement over a decade ago. Education has gotten better too, if not cheaper — he's proud he could give all his children a decent education and a shot at good jobs. Public transport, though, hasn't moved an inch: still cheap, still unreliable, buses that might make you wait an hour and run no more often than they did ten years ago. New roads have gone in around Kuta specifically, while the older roads elsewhere on the island go unrepaired, and traffic has grown heavier as everyone now needs a car or motorbike just to get to work.
Garbage collection is improving slowly, but not fast enough to keep pace — and part of the problem, he's quick to note, isn't tourists directly but the shift from banana-leaf wrapping to plastic, a change driven by manufacturers more than visitors. Land in South Bali has gotten expensive enough that most Balinese can't afford to buy near the cities anymore; what gets sold is usually sold by Balinese who need the cash, who then buy something cheaper further out. The government has spent years encouraging people to rent rather than sell, so the land stays theirs and still earns money — he's not sure how well that's actually worked.
He doesn't think crime has really risen because of tourism — stealing simply isn't the Balinese way, in his view, whatever some people from Java might get up to. The one vice he'll own up to: gambling on cockfights, technically illegal even though the fights themselves, tied to ceremony, are not.
Culturally, he doesn't think much has shifted at the core. Young people dress differently, wear their hair longer, get the occasional tattoo — but they're raised on the same principles and still take part in the ceremonies. What tourists get to see of Balinese religion and dance is a curated, adapted slice; the real version stays theirs, mostly unseen by outsiders, and he's glad it does.
“I really enjoy getting to know a lot of different people from different countries this way,” he says. “I can not think of one thing I would like them to change.”